"Big Yellow Taxi" and "Field Below"

Response to Poems

Authors Note: This piece is a response to the songs "Big Yellow Taxi", and "Field Below".

"Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell is about how the business' took over and created an economy, but didn't think twice about the environment. While "Field Below" by Regina Spektor is about how she is longing for the nature she grew up with but now lives in the big city an wants to go back to the way it was. Both poems are about how you don't know what you have until it is gone. Some ways you can see this is the great figurative language in these two poems. When in "Field Below" Regina Spektor says, "again the sun was never called" is an example of a metaphor and "darkness spreads over the snow" is an anaphora and "like ancient bruises" is a simile.

In "Big Yellow Taxi", and in "Field Below", both artists do a good job showing the mood and tone of the songs. In "Field Below" I think Regina Spektor is trying to have us feel sympathetic on why she can't go back to the way it was before the big city. I feel sorrow because she can't go back to the way it was unless she gives up everything. While in "Big Yellow Taxi", Joni Mitchell is trying to get us to do something about the environment, I felt sympathetic towards Joni Mitchell because she is distraught about the people came and "they paved paradise, and put up a parking lot." The music in both songs goes well with the lyrics, in Big Yellow Taxi, th be tune is more upbeat and in "Field Below" the tune is more slow.

Parody Poem

Parody Poem

By: Austin and Sam

I have seen
your glasses
that were on
your face

and which
you were probably
proud of
for them being so big

Forgive me
they were so big
oh so thick
and I couldn’t resist making fun of them.



This parody poem relates to the story because it shows how people in the South didn’t like the people in the North during this time. The speaker of this poem is the girl who made fun of Ricky’s glasses and how big they were. Ricky and Bobby are the audience of this poem. The tone is misunderstanding because Ricky thought that the girl was flirting with her when she was really making fun of him. The mood was sad because Ricky didn’t realize that the girl was making fun of him.

Mother to Son Response

Sam Queen
3/14/12
Life Ain’t No Crystal Stair
Authors Note: This response is analyzing the poem, Mother to Son by Langston Hughes.

In the poem Mother to Son Langston Hughes does a tremendous using figurative language to show that we should never give up. One use of figurative language that really stuck out was “life ain’t no crystal stair.” It shows that you can’t have life be handed to you on a silver platter. He is telling us that we need to work for a living not except everyone to break their back to help us do things that we could do on our own. This is important to now and back then because Langston Hughes was a part of the Harlem Renaissance and is telling the young people to never give up. This poem really was inspiring to me and made me realize that the people in Harlem at the time really needed to persevere if they were to have their voice be heard.

Retelling Piece (revised)

Jonas is the new Receiver, the highest honor in the community. He has to receive all the memories of feeling, and emotion, something the community doesn’t have. But Jonas soon comes to realize that the government is full of corruption and the way they are being oppressed is wrong.

Censorship

Sam Queen
3/9/12
Censorship is Everywhere
Authors Note: this piece is about how one of the main topics in The Giver is censorship in the form of a 5 paragraph essay.

Imagine, seeing things through a dogs eyes, no color, just black, white, and shades of gray. This is what the people in the Community live like. No emotions, or feeling, just the same. In The Giver by Lois Lowry, censorship is a big idea throughout the entire novel.

Censorship, as we all know, means to cover up or make someone believe something that isn’t true to protect them or to keep them from realizing. In The Giver the quote “they know nothing” really makes you think how these people live their lives not knowing joy, pain, frustration, and peace. Also, “they know nothing” really shows that the government is censoring the people to the evil things that they are doing like birth control, and regulating what people eat and do.

While censorship is a main topic in The Giver it is also a main idea in other novels like Fahrenheit 451. The people in this novel are censored to the malevolent deeds that the government is doing by burning one of the greatest things on this earth, books. Just like the people in The Giver, the people in Fahrenheit 451 are both censored by the government.

Even though censorship in fictional books is an important topic to discuss, it is also important in the real world. Censorship in the world is real and going on today, in our TV’s, radio programs, and internet sites, also in war, with censoring some information to protect certain military secrets. Censorship is in other countries like China where they can even talk about politics on the internet without that site being banned.

Censorship is an important topic throughout The Giver but more importantly a topic in life. Make sure you have a reason behind what you’re doing before you commit to it.